The Mystery Painting: Leonardo’s Portrait of Isabella d’Este

Described by her contemporaries as “first lady of the world,” Isabella d’Este, marquesa of Mantua, was a leading figure of the Italian Renaissance, a powerful, well-educated woman, a patron of the arts, and even a fashion trendsetter.

Daughter of duke Ercole of Ferrara and Eleanor of Naples, Duchess of Ferrara, she was engaged to Francesco II di Gonzaga at the age of six, and moved to Mantua in 1480, where she created one of the most cultured and refined courts of her time. A lover of antiques, she collected many precious objects in her ‘studiolo’.

Aware of her virtues, Isabella entrusted her image only to the most famous artists of the time, including Leonardo da Vinci, who, in 1499, on his way to Venice from Milan, spent some time at her court in Mantua. The portrait however was never painted – or was it?

Leonardo first produced a sketch for the portrait, now housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris; it is, according to the museum’s website, “one of Leonardo’s finest head-and-shoulders portraits.”

Leonardo left Mantua before he could finish the portrait; this we know because Isabella sent him a letter urging him to complete the commissioned work.

In 2013, a painting was found in the vault of a Swiss bank, which experts attributed to Leonardo as the completed portrait – previously, it was thought that the painting was either never completed or that it had been lost.

Carbon dating suggests the discovered portrait was painted around the start of the 16th century; further proof that the painting may indeed have existed is a letter, where Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona’s assistant, reporting on a meeting between the cardinal and Leonardo in France, during which the artist showed the cardinal a series of his paintings, wrote: “There was a painting in oil depicting a certain Lombardy lady.”